Wednesday, June 14, 2006

There are now about 1,000 Gulf Arab bloggers, up five times from 2004, according to Haitham Sabbah, a Bahrain-based blogger and Middle East editor for Global Voices, a programme launched last year by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School in the United States that tracks and collects blogs worldwide.

SMH missed a good chance to provide hyperlinks in the online edition. Had they done so, they might have discovered that the Religious Policeman cited in the article has recently folded his tent. [TTLB Large Mammal already, with over three hundred comments to his last post! I wonder how long TTLB taxonomy keeps inactive blogs in the system. I know of a couple that have gone dormant a long time that continue to be listed...]

Also, as I read I realized that we see references to "the Gulf" presuming the reader knows which gulf is being discussed. I suppose references to a Persian Gulf might be considered inflamatory.

Hmm. This is interesting. I read about Iranian women protesting. Here are links to photos and commentary by bloggers practicing a little micro-journalism. When I come across stuff like this I really have to question to need for preemptive wars. It seems to me there are ways to cultivate meaningful change in other countries by feeding and watering the seeds that are already there instead of bombing the crap out of them.

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About Me

Hootsbuddy's Place is a playground of eclectic interests (see blogroll) and a critical habit of mind. Traffic here is mainly from search referrals. This link leads to two previous profiles of the blog host. Readers should be familiar with the Overton Window. Briefly, ideas can be organized in a continuum of public acceptance along these steps: Unthinkable, Radical, Acceptable, Sensible, Popular, and Policy. Hootsbuddy's Place is more apt to be at the Unthinkable end of the list than the Policy end. Links to high-traffic sites are minimal except for credibility because I tend to be a bottom-feeder. I can be reached privately via Hootsbuddy (at) G-mail (dot) com. Make yourself comfortble and enjoy your visit.